Beverly Keel

Beverly Keel is chair of MTSU’s Department of Recording Industry and an award-winning music journalist. She is also co-founder of Change the Conversation, which fights for gender equality in music.

Forbes included her on its national list of “40 Women to Watch Over 40,” a group of innovative women recognized for disrupting industry and society.

She also serves as publicist for Jamey Johnson and has been a consultant for artists including Alison Krauss, Lionel Richie and Scotty McCreery. She has hosted album-launch events for Don Henley and Barry Gibb.

She returned to MTSU in 2013 after a leave of absence to serve as senior vice president of artist and media relations for Universal Music Group Nashville.

A former music industry columnist for the Nashville Scene and Nashville Banner newspapers, her journalism has received awards from the Associated Press and the Association of American Newsweeklies. She received the Charlie Lamb Award for Excellence in Country Music Journalism for her work as a columnist at The Tennessean.

A graduate of Leadership Music, Leadership Middle Tennessee and Leadership Nashville, she is on the boards of CMA, the Recording Academy, the Women’s Fund and I’ll Fly Away Foundation.
Beverly has been inducted into the Nashville Business Journal’s Women in Music City Awards Hall of Fame and the Metro Nashville Public Schools Hall of Fame. She was one of the YWCA’s 2016 Academy for Women of Achievement honorees.

A Nashville native, she earned her bachelor’s degree from MTSU and her master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.